The Politics of Migrants' Transnational Political Practices

This article critically examines transnational political engagement of migrants and refugees in local, national and global political processes. Based on inductive reading of existing scholarship and in particular the author's own research on Turks and Kurds in Europe, the article discusses key concepts and trends in our understanding of why, how and with what consequences migrants engage in transnational political practices. These practices, this article suggests, are influenced by the particular multilevel institutional environment, which migrant political actors negotiate their way through. This environment includes not only political institutions in the sending and receiving country, but also global norms and institutions and networks of other nonstate actors. Finally, the article argues for critical examination of the democratic transparency and accountability of migrants' transnational networks in any analysis of their long and short‐term impact on domestic and global politics.     

The Intervention Project on Absence and Well-being (IPAW): Design and results from the baseline of a 5-year study

This paper presents the background, design and baseline results of the Intervention Project on Absence and Well-being (IPAW). IPAW is a 5-year psychosocial work environment intervention study including 22 intervention and 30 control work-sites from three different types of work-site (a large pharmaceutical company, municipal technical services, and municipal nursing homes) in Copenhagen, Denmark. The baseline survey reported in this paper was conducted in 1996-97, and the cohort was followed until 2002. Interventions took place during 1996-98 at the organizational and interpersonal level and focused on psychological demands, social support, control, meaning of work, and predictability. The main end-points are self-rated health, perceived stress, absence from work, job satisfaction, and labour turnover. Analyses of the baseline data show good reliability of the psychosocial scales and a number of clear associations between psychosocial work environment factors and health indicators. The baseline data also demonstrate several discrepancies between the planned design of the study and the actual implementation of the project in practice.     

Subtle, Pervasive, Harmful: Racist and Sexist Remarks in Public as Hate Speech

Using field observations and 100 in-depth interviews with participants recruited from public places in Northern California, this article documents the experience of being the target of hate speech in public places. Focusing on racist and sexist hate speech (as participants define the phenomenon), I show that there is a range of experiences with hate speech and that it is often quite subtle, leaving all but intended victims unaware that it occurs. These data also show that such interactions occur with regularity and leave targets harmed in significant ways. There can be little doubt that members of traditionally disadvantaged groups face a strikingly different reality on the street than do members of privileged groups. Although the legal status of hate speech remains ambiguous, its harms are not.     

Simulating Properties of the Likelihood Ratio Test for a Unit Root in an Explosive Second-Order Autoregression

This paper provides a means of accurately simulating explosive autoregressive processes and uses this method to analyze the distribution of the likelihood ratio test statistic for an explosive second-order autoregressive process of a unit root. While the standard Dickey–Fuller distribution is known to apply in this case, simulations of statistics in the explosive region are beset by the magnitude of the numbers involved, which cause numerical inaccuracies. This has previously constituted a bar on supporting asymptotic results by means of simulation, and analyzing the finite sample properties of tests in the explosive region.     

Inference based on progressively censored sample from Pareto population

Abstract

In this paper, we assume that the lifetimes have a two-parameter Pareto distribution and discuss some results of progressive Type-II censored sample. We obtain maximum likelihood estimators and Bayes estimators of the unknown parameters under squared error loss and a precautionary loss functions in progressively Type-II censored sample. Robust Bayes estimation of unknown parameters over three different classes of priors under progressively Type-II censored sample, squared error loss, and precautionary loss functions are obtained. We discuss estimation of unknown parameters on competing risks progressive Type-II censoring. Finally, we consider the problem of estimating the common scale parameter of two Pareto distributions when samples are progressively Type-II censored.     

Inference Methods for Correlated Left Truncated Lifetimes: Parent and Offspring Relations in an Adoption Study

The associations in mortality of adult adoptees and their biological or adoptive parents have been studied in order to separate genetic and environmental influences. The 1003 Danish adoptees born 1924–26 have previously been analysed in a Cox regression model, using dichotomised versions of the parents’ lifetimes as covariates. This model will be referred to as the conditional Cox model, as it analyses lifetimes of adoptees conditional on parental lifetimes. Shared frailty models may be more satisfactory by using the entire observed lifetime of the parents. In a simulation study, sample size, distribution of lifetimes, truncation- and censoring patterns were chosen to illustrate aspects of the adoption dataset, and were generated from the conditional Cox model or a shared frailty model with gamma distributed frailties. First, efficiency was compared in the conditional Cox model and a shared frailty model, based on the conditional approach. For data with type 1 censoring the models showed no differences, whereas in data with random or no censoring, the models had different power in favour of the one from which data were generated. Secondly, estimation in the shared frailty model by a conditional approach or a two-stage copula approach was compared. Both approaches worked well, with no sign of dependence upon the truncation pattern, but some sign of bias depending on the censoring. For frailty parameters close to zero, we found bias when the estimation procedure used did not allow negative estimates. Based on this evaluation, we prefer to use frailty models allowing for negative frailty parameter estimates. The conclusions from earlier analyses of the adoption study were confirmed, though without greater precision than using the conditional Cox model. Analyses of associations between parental lifetimes are also presented.     

A Comparison of Egg Consumption with Other Modifiable Coronary Heart Disease Lifestyle Risk Factors: A Relative Risk Apportionment Study

Guidelines from the American Heart Association (AHA) recommend that healthy adults limit their intake of dietary cholesterol to less than 300 mg per day. Since a large egg contains about 71% of that amount, the AHA recommends restricting egg consumption unless dietary cholesterol intakes from other sources are limited. We applied a risk apportionment approach to estimate the contribution of egg consumption and other modifiable lifestyle risk factors (e.g., smoking, poor diet, minimal exercise, and alcohol intake) to coronary heart disease (CHD) risk at the population level. Specifically, we categorized the U.S. adult population ages 25+ into distinct risk groups based on the prevalence of modifiable lifestyle risk factors and applied an apportionment model, typically used to assess risk contribution at the individual level, to estimate the contribution of egg intake to CHD risk. Our analysis shows that the combination of modifiable lifestyle risk factors accounts for less than 40% of the population CHD mortality. For the majority of U.S. adults age 25+, consuming one egg a day accounts for <1% of CHD risk. Hence, focusing on decreasing egg intake as an approach to modify CHD risk would be expected to yield minimal results relative to changing other behaviors such as smoking and other dietary habits.